August 21, 2009
Most primary schools in China follow a rigid standard of admitting only students who are at least six years old. A child who has missed the September 1 cutoff (national back-to-school day) by just a few days may have to wait a full year to be admitted.
Newspapers in Chongqing recently observed that some local mothers-to-be were demanding c-sections so they could give birth before the deadline. To those parents, pushing up their child’s date of birth even a few days earlier means an extra advantage in future competition.
The Changchun-based City Evening News performed an investigation of its own. According to its report, although there is a regulation that specifies a minimum age for a child to go to school, the schools themselves are usually the ones decide the strict age cutoff.
However, a number of good primary schools in Changchun are very strict about the age: they don’t even take six-year-old children who happened to be born precisely on September 1.
Unlike the hospitals in Chongqing, which confirmed a birth boom in August, a gynecologist in Changchun who was interviewed by the newspaper said that there has been no obvious increase in the number of newborns in the hospital.
But the report did meet a mother-to-be whose due date is on September 20. She had been to the hospital to consult about a c-section: “Even if the baby is born on September 1, that’s not good enough for some schools. That means tens of thousands of yuan, and you have to find the right person, too. That’s a lot of trouble.”
- City Evening News (News): Mothers take c-sections to send their children to school early